A Radical Perfectionist: Revisiting Cavell in the Light of Kant

Abstract

Stanley Cavell is widely regarded as a major philosophical figure, and he is generally recognized to have devoted a great deal of his writing to ethical themes. nevertheless, it is not an exaggeration to say that his work has not for the most part been received within Anglo-American analytic ethics. there is an impressively large body of commentary on Cavell’s contribution to moral philosophy, but most of it gets generated and discussed outside analytic circles. Paul Guyer’s remarks here on the major strand of Cavell’s ethical thought that Cavell places under the heading of “moral perfectionism” are for this reason very welcome.1 Guyer’s main thesis is that Cavell’s perfectionist posture is more Kantian than Cavell and others have realized. Given that Kantian approaches currently enjoy a central position in analytic moral philosophy, this is rightly regarded as a bold proposal to situate Cavell inside an intellectual tradition in which he has yet to find a stable home. I am going to ask whether Cavell can, in fact, be thus neatly domesticated within mainstream ethics or whether there are more substantive reasons for his outsider status. My interest in this question does not stem from any overwhelming disagreement with Guyer’s specific claims. Guyer has made a thoughtful and compelling case for convergences between Cavell and Kant. there is, however, good reason to think that the convergences in question coexist with some deep divergences and, further, that the divergences mark Cavell out as, in certain respects, a quite unKantian thinker. Bearing these things in mind, I want here to touch on some of the more striking ways in